Walking to school is a healthy way for many kids to get their daily dose of exercise. Unfortunately many parents are rightfully concerned about their children’s safety on the city’s streets because of aggressive driver and lack of good pedestrian safety infrastructure. Everyday in front of many city schools you see parents dropping kids off in […]

One in 11 U.S. public schools are within 500 feet of a highway, exposing 4.4 million children to elevated levels of pollution, putting kids at elevated risk of developing asthma. But cheap land remains alluring to school districts, and America's system of school siting is not getting better.

This post is part of a series featuring stories and research that will be presented at the Pro-Walk/Pro-Bike/Pro-Place conference September 8-11 in Pittsburgh. To get to Seoul Gumsan Elementary School in South Korea, students have to cross a heavily trafficked road with a blind curve. Between 2009 and 2010, 89 children were injured and one killed in 86 traffic […]

About a generation ago, many American school districts started shuttering and abandoning walkable neighborhood schools and building replacements in sprawling, undeveloped locations where the land was cheap. But by opting for cheap land costs in the short term, they incurred much higher transportation costs in the long term. Now many school districts are struggling under the […]

Lately, American schools have been pretty responsive to public health and safety threats facing children. Witness the rise of peanut butter bans or the dwindling number of vending machines in schools. But schools haven’t been very successful at tackling what is arguably a much bigger threat to children’s health: air pollution caused by driving. Asthma is the most […]